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Reveille
IN THIS ISSUE
The Daily
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2015
lsureveille.com/daily
TURNED AWAY
Rift emerges in Tigerland dress codes, Reggie’s dismisses discrimination claims BY SAM KARLIN @ samkarlin_TDR
thedailyreveille
• Les Miles leads Tigers to success, page 5 • LSU Museum of Art offers pastries from local bakery, page 7 • OPINION: Psych majors crucial to combatting mental health issues, page 12
@lsureveille
Volume 120 · No. 51
thedailyreveille EDITORIAL
W
hen Southern University, Southeastern Louisiana University and LSU’s homecomings fell on the same weekend a few years ago, Paris Tate, a 21-year-old black and gay man, chose to celebrate in Tigerland — the quintessential hangout spot for young LSU students about a mile from Death Valley. When he approached the entrance of Reggie’s, he said the doorman turned him away because he was wearing white shoes and earrings forbidden in the bar’s dress code. “I was with a few friends, and when I found out I couldn’t get in, they didn’t go in,” Tate said. ”We all stood outside.” Tate said he watched as the doorman allowed someone else wearing similar shoes into the bar— a young white man Tate grew up in Osyka, a rural Mississippi town of fewer than 500 people, which he said seeps with racism and homophobia. While visiting there last year, an older man drunkenly threw punches and shouted slurs at him during a house party where almost everyone was white. When Tate was 12, he moved to Baton Rouge,
see REGGIE’S, page 15
photos by SAM KARLIN / The Daily Reveille
Reggie’s bar, which neighbors five other establishments in Tigerland, employs a dress code that is the subject of controversy in the Baton Rouge community.
Tigerland dress code wrongfully perpetuates racism
EDITORIAL BOARD @lsureveille Dress codes in Tigerland might not read “whites only,” but their effect and enforcement do perpetuate racist stereotypes and unjustly target black people. Reggie’s management is right when it says its bar’s policies mirror banks’ and schools’. But even if there was nothing wrong with characterizing all criminals as Air Jordan-wearing, pants-sagging thugs, there’s no excuse when two people walk up to a bar wearing white shoes and only one of them gets in. Here in the tradition-oriented South, we hear stories about selective enforcement of rules meant for the general population that disproportionately restrict minorities. Racially biased dress codes are just one way the Jim Crow legacy survives in Louisiana. It’s bad enough that we are blind to so many instances of silent racism in our community, and the effects they have on students whose skin color may be different. But what’s even worse is when we recognize a problem and refuse to do nothing. Let’s all acknowledge the problems with Tigerland’s dress codes and ask ourselves how we feel about frequenting its bars so often. Let’s think twice when we wear a prohibited piece of clothing to a bar and make it past the bouncer but see another LSU Tiger wearing the same thing standing outside. Despite the at-times regrettable decisions made on Bob Pettit Boulevard, Tigerland is still supposed to be a communal, fun and safe experience for all LSU students — an outlet for a diverse, but unified student body It’s not right now, but by recognizing there’s a problem, we can help it get there.